Regional

4:48 pm

Thu June 21, 2012

Park To Be Built On Paseo De Onate

(LAS CRUCES) – The City of Las Cruces is preparing to unveil new plans on a project that will help enhance one area neighborhood.

It’s been in the works for a number of years, but now city officials are almost ready to break ground on a new neighborhood park in the canyon point neighborhood on Paseo De Onate.

“It’s got three sort of bolders like components to it, integrated with traditional play-equipment and a shade structure as well,” said Catherine Mathews, landscape architect for the City of Las Cruces.

Mathews says it took the city 18 months to get approval from the Bureau of Land Management just to transfer the property from the county to the city.

“It’s a great community enhancement, actually right now the parcel is virtually vacant. It has some existing hiking trails to it, I’m sure members of the neighborhood use it but it’ll be a great gathering space and just an addition advancement as people enter the neighborhood and drive the the road, they’ll be able to see a community that cares about itself and its is sort of up and coming with new amenities for residents who live in the area,” she said.

Although the property is ten acres, the park will be built on less than an acre.

“Part of the efficiency on this project was to create a native looking park with more native kinds of plan and materials and also with recycle materials as well, all of the site furnishings, all have a recycle component to them,” she said.

The city saved money on the project by creating the design of the park in house. This way all the funds, which are estimated to be $238,000 will go towards construction.

“The city is trying to emphasis the sustainability of all of its projects and its one was to do it here in the parks is to bring that sustainability into the parks with recycled materials, native plants that we have on water useable and also retaining a lot of the vegetation on site, there’s a lot of there’s on site, well keep these as part of landscape design,” she said.

Once construction begins, crews should be able to finish the project within six months. The City of Las Cruces will host a viewing of the plans at City Hall Wednesday June 27th.